News Seeps Through to U.N.--Economic Times Are Hard : Boutros-Ghali offer steps to ease the world body’s crisis

The United Nations, warns Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, teeters “on the edge of bankruptcy,” the result of growing deficits that have been fed by inflated expenditures and nonpayment of assessments by some members, primarily the United States. Congress has long balked at appropriating the full U.S. assessment because it thinks it is disproportionately large, especially for peacekeeping operations, and because it thinks, rightly, that the U.N. secretariat is vastly overstaffed. As a consequence, the United States owes about half of the $2.3-billion total U.N. debt. Two proposals by Boutros-Ghali, if adopted, could help ease the fiscal crisis.

One is for a cut in the 10,000-member U.N. staff. Boutros-Ghali avoided a specific proposal, but Joseph Connor, the chief U.N. financial officer, says that it would take a 10% cut to balance the new and slimmed-down two-year, $2.6-billion budget. Boutros-Ghali’s second idea was more unexpected and more far-reaching. Without naming the United States, he suggests capping assessments so that no single state would contribute more than 15% or 20% of the regular budget. The United States is now assessed for 25% of that budget, along with 31% of the cost of peacekeeping operations. Congress has flatly refused to pay more than 25% of peacekeeping costs. Thus the $1.2 billion in U.S. arrears.

Downsizing the secretariat and capping the American assessment well below its current level--which could save the United States up to $120 million annually--would be welcomed by Congress. Elsewhere the reaction seems sure to be chilly. Jobs in the U.N. bureaucracy, shared among many countries, are considered plums, and eliminating as many as 1,000 would be strongly resisted. Even more resistance can be expected to the proposal to cut the U.S. assessment, for the obvious reason that other nations would have to make up for what the United States doesn’t pay. The European Union states, for example, which together are responsible for 35% of budget assessments, have already protested. Japan, whose assessment is about half that of the United States, could also be expected to shrink from paying more. The assessment formula is specified by the 185-member General Assembly and is mainly based on a country’s national income. It won’t be easy getting revisions approved.

But without something like the changes that have been proposed, Congress almost certainly will continue to balk at paying off the U.S. debt. In that event, says Connor, bankruptcy by the end of the year looms. The United States of course should settle its debt, as it long ago contracted to do. The United Nations at the same time must adopt the stringent economies its perilous financial situation demands and revise the assessment formula to spread its costs in a more politically responsible way. Boutros-Ghali is right: a fairer assessment on the United States “would better reflect the fact that this organization is the instrument of all nations.” For all concerned, less financial dependence on Washington could only be a healthy thing.